


S K

by Random_ag



Category: Bendy and the Ink Machine
Genre: Animal Death, Blood and Injury, Delusions, Hallucinations, I dont fucking know - Freeform, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Psychosis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:55:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28291236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Random_ag/pseuds/Random_ag
Summary: He remembered his first job.





	S K

He remembered his first job.

He was the butcher’s apprentice.

He did not remember the butcher, or the butcher’s shop, or the knives, or the animals.

He remembered wet feet, brute force and finesse, learning how to cut, the ice around his hands as he placed the meat to show.

He remembered the cooked scraps he was given to eat instead of money.

He didn’t remember his second job, because his memories were hazy at best and near non-existent at worst. He was trying to live, and the cold was hellbent on dragging him down with their cold, cold hands; he had no room for remembering.

If he tried to recall, he saw many things - musical instruments, oil, fabric, liquid colors, foul odors, shoes, grease, trash, bones, fluff, without a clear order, without a clear outline.

He remembered the carpenter. He remembered the carpenter, and he remembered that it was not his second job, because he had the four grey walls around him already when the carpenter taught him how to carve a mask, and he had birds he had not been lucid enough to name and a blanket and a coat. He saw everything more clearly with the mask, because the mask made out of cheap wood heated his face so very sweetly with the flames of hell and melted the freezing hands keeping him from sleeping - and for a while he slept, and slept, and slept.

After the carpenter he did not remember his fourth job. He remembered some of them, not all of them, not in order; but what he remembered, he remembered kind of well.

He worked on a construction site once. He climbed up the long iron pillars like a ferret, and he was not afraid to fall. One time he nearly fell, holding onto a horizontal mast for dear life and shaking and convulsing and trying to call for help with his jaws glued together, because something was trying to push him down, push him down, push him down, and he thought it was his father, and it scared him. He never came there again, disappearing in the alley, because his father was there. His father had recognized him, and tried to push him down. There had been nobody around him, but he knew there was his father.

He worked in a school once. He was a janitor - he did not mind being a janitor - and the teachers did not mind him, even if they were a little scared. The children were terrified of him, most of them; but he didn’t bother them, and they just looked. Some of them thought his indifference was a challenge, and so they kicked him, and bit him, and threw rocks at him, and showed him their tongues before running to the teachers. He did not mind. He felt the cold coat him one day, and he fell to the floor shaking; the children made fun of him and ran around him, and then a hand hit him on the arm, and he grabbed it, and the other one, and he stared into their eyes like he was about to rip them apart. It was a girl. She screamed. It was too loud, and he let go of her to shield his ears. He had mistaken her for his brother. He had been scared. He crawled away to where they threw things away, and then never came back again.

He worked as a mechanic once. It was the first time he saw a car so close. He thought they were very weird, and that they spoke like large angry cats. The trick was keeping the growling loud, the sparks away, and the liquids inside. He did not remember why he left. There was a cat, maybe. He buried it, maybe. He didn’t come back.

He worked as a dog tamer once. When a dog bit down on his arm he told it ‘NO’ and gave a slap to its side that made the sound of a drum against its poor bones. The dog let go of his bleeding arm and whined away; and so he beckoned it closer again, and instructed it to lick his wound. When it did so, he would say 'good, good, good’ and give it gentle scratches and pets. The dog wagged its tail. It worked always. They did not understand why it worked always. He did not remember why he left. Someone, maybe. A bad person. Thinking about them made him think of the butcher. Brute force and finesse. Hampaat chewing slowly.

He worked in the sewers once. It smelled awful. And it was wet. And his mother was there. He saw her gurgle out of a pipe. He did not want to stay there.

He worked as an electrician once. Just once. He just did what they wanted, and then left.

He worked as a milkman once. The milk was delicious. He wasn’t sure it was milk, but he didn’t know enough to dispute that.

He was paid to catch a mole once. He didn’t get to keep it after. Which was sad.

He worked as a janitor many times. Many many times. They all melted together.

Then there was the Studios.

He was the factotum. He did everything.

It was the job he had for the longest (he was still working as it); it was also the only job he had been hired for.

Usually he just decided he worked somewhere, and he told the people in charge, and then he started working.

Apparently it was not like that.

In his defense, nobody had ever told him.

Also in his defense, as Kim said much time later, “If a sudden apparition came into my office and told me with the most haunting and terrifying voice, 'I work here’, I don’t think I would argue with that.”

Niamh did argue with that, of course, after a minute of blinding white surprise - because she was not scared, just a bit surprised - because she was Niamh, and she was not afraid of punching the unknown in the face if it lunged at her with malicious intent, and she blurted out “Like hell ye do” before leaning to take the contract and hiring form out of one of her drawers.

He thought she was taking out things she needed for her work, and so he left.

She chased him down to actually hire him.

Again, of course, not everybody could be Niamh O'Flannel.

(Which was far from a bad thing, people joked, Niamh herself included. He thought about it for a while when he first heard that, and then argued that he would have liked it very much if everybody was Niamh, failing to elaborate that it was because he liked how affectionate she was to him. He then added that he would have liked for Kim to remain Kim even in a sea of Niamhs, again not explaining that the man was very sweet to him. Shawn and Johnny cackled at this and elbowed Kim gently; he didn’t understand that it was a friendly kind of mocking, and stood up sharply to swallow their arms whole like a python. Kim averted the crisis. Niamh would have waited until the first bite to intervene.)

Wally Franks, the janitor, looked like either a very large rabbit or a gargantuan baby chicken. He also looked absolutely terrified, but he had that effect on people. Wally did not calm down even when the new factotum ignored him, but again, he had that effect on people. Like the organist, Johnny, who was a people and who screamed when he saw him hang halfway out of a vent loud enough for some other guy (he learned later that he was called Sammy and that he hated when the instrument players were sick) to come in. Seeing his mask made the guy slip on the floor and yell “JESUS CHRIST WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT” very loud. He decided going back in the vent was a good idea.

He liked vents. They reached everywhere very fast, and walls were not a thing. Also, he liked moving around like a lizard.

And people did not yell or fall or jump while he moved.

He got to a place full of toys - soft, plushie toys. He remembered making some. He liked them. There was a man sewing dolls who looked at him with veiled fright on his eyes. He was the darkest man he had ever seen, and he had beautiful golden glimmers in his eyes. Kim stared back at him and just kind of said “Hi” very politely. He grunted a greeting back at him. He seemed very nice.

Niamh stomped in after a moment or something, and in some way she managed to grab him (nicely), tuck him in her arms (which felt very good because she was very soft) and drag him back to her office to be properly hired. She put him on a chair in front of here, told him him to stay there (and he did) and then asked for his name.

He told her.

She asked him to spell it.

He didn’t know how to.

So she asked him to write it.

It took him a little, because he had a very vague idea of how to put letters together and what shapes they have, but he managed to make something similar to an S and a K on the paper she gave him.

“Sk?” she asked.

He corrected her.

She seemed confused.

“Like they’re separate?”

He nodded.

“Es-Kay, then?”

He corrected her again.

“Ka like what, like what a crow says?”

“Ka.”

“Ka like cat?”

He nodded.

She wrote it better.

She asked for his lastname.

He didn’t say anything.

“Yer lastname,” she repeated.

He kept not saying anything.

In his defense, nobody had ever told him he should have had one.

In his defense, he was doing everything in his power to forget the one he knew.

She asked him if he wanted Ka as his lastname, but he insisted, a little confused, that it was a part of his name, and so Niamh shrugged and just wrote Eska.


End file.
